


where is it now - the glory and the dream?

by timelyutterances



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Men and Poetry, OotP, Pining, Romance, Sex, Slow Burn, Unhealthy Relationships, but not in the first chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 15:30:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20641472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timelyutterances/pseuds/timelyutterances
Summary: “I think you are selfish,” Remus made efforts to control his tone, but couldn’t help bristle at the word friend. “I think you are a selfish man, and how I thought you were the same I –““You call me selfish?” Sirius exclaimed, striding towards Remus, knocking over the heavy dining chair. “You sit here, wanting whatever died thirteen years ago, and say I am the selfish one?”Remus and Sirius reunite in the aftermath of the Triwizard Tournament, in the hopes of rekindling their relationship. But one was a man who spent thirteen years with his soul being ripped at, and the other one who spoke to a lover's ghost every day. It would not go as easy as they thought it would.





	where is it now - the glory and the dream?

**Author's Note:**

> The badly aligned poem interspersed is 'Intimations of Immortality' by Wordsworth.
> 
> Here, we have our two lads being outrageously problematic on both sides.

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,  
  
---  
  
The earth, and every common sight,  
  
To me did seem  
  
Apparell'd in celestial light,  
  
The glory and the freshness of a dream.  
  
\--

**September, 1993**

He wanted to shut a door in Severus Snape’s face, the first night he was back at Hogwarts. He was asking for it, Remus decided – gnawing on a thumbnail already too short. He understood that yes – Snape is doing him a _favour_ in making up that atrociously difficult and increasingly vile smelling potion, but Remus also concluded that being a decent person should be a given rather than a favour. He wonders if there was any way to retrieve the potion _and _be rid of Snape’s company once and for all. For tonight, at the very least.

“How is it then, to be back in the den?” Snape seemed to be holding the goblet tantalizingly out of reach. And what a goblet it was. Gold, or at the very least gold plated, with shimmering emeralds set around the rim. Remus resigned himself to dropping the damned thing at least once and reached his hand out for it. Surprisingly, Snape decided to give it over.

“Thank you, Severus.” Remus grudgingly allowed, gingerly accepting the goblet. He decided he would make friends and play the good boy, as he often ended up having to do. “So, how has the journey to Hogwarts been? Rough… flight?”

The thought of Snape on a broomstick made him want to blind himself with the overdramatic goblet.

“Not really,” Snape murmured, somehow managing to look past Remus and into his room whilst he spoke. “Well, not as eventful as yours, I hear. You ran into Potter?”

“Yes,” this time, the smile that cut across his face was genuine and startling. “Yes, and his friends. Nasty bit of business with the Dementors, really –“

“I didn’t _ask_, Lupin. The Headmaster had informed me of the Dementors prior to you finding out about them.” Snape’s sneer was an exact parallel to the one he wore when he’d (wrongly) assumed that none of James Potter’s friends had made Prefect. Remus wondered how a man could age so badly yet manage to sneer just as he did in adolescence.

“Well, that’s lovely he keeps you informed.” Remus shrugged. _Be nice_, he thought to himself, _you do not want him to take a piss in the potion_.

“Yes. And there are, of course, things that I _know_, and others don’t.” Snape raised his beetling eyebrows (for a man with a hairline rising that quickly, those eyebrows were dense). “Such as your tendency to grow a bit of extra fur. And of course, your unusual proclivities. Of the criminal nature.”

“Yes,” Remus made sure the goblet of potion was tucked carefully behind him. A well-timed hex, even now. “That’s really nice of you to tell me about how delinquent I am but I must inform you that homosexuality has been decriminalized by the United Kingdom since –“

“I mean I know, not _who_ you fucked, but I can _place very good odds_ on the fact you are helping the man find what he wants.” The Potions Master’s eyes narrowed into slits. “I’m making this clear from the outset, Lupin – I will find out, whatever you’re hiding from Dumbledore –“

Without another word, Remus slammed the door in Snape’s face. He looked at his hand, shaking slightly on the carved oak door and wondered why he was surprised. Snape’s prejudices shouldn’t shock him so; certainly, the man turned from evil but the beliefs that led him to the Death Eaters must still be entrenched.

And to call Sirius a _proclivity, _of a criminal nature? Black had been his life. He would have lived for him and he would have died for him and Remus knew in his deepest of hearts that he was still in his veins.

“God, Sirius.” He murmured, turning away from the door and the smoking goblet to face his reflection in the mirror. “I’ve gotten old. And I’m so tired. And it’s been thirteen years and I’m still talking to you as if you’re beside me. Every bloody day, I can’t live if I can’t speak to you.”

Laughing bitterly, he downed the potion.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—  
  
---  
  
Turn wheresoe'er I may,  
  
By night or day,  
  
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.  
  
**June, 1994**

“Sirus, it’s all so different now.” Remus whispered to himself, stretching his legs out in front of the fire. “Hogwarts, the world, the Ministry. I got an owl from Dumbledore. He was telling me that Voldemort is back; and that Harry _saw_ him. My God, Sirius, the boy is but fourteen! And he’s already taken a life and bloody Peter is snivelling beside him, and I have no idea what we’ll do from here.”

“And Sirius –“ Remus’s voice shook slightly as three taps echoed on his door in quick succession. “Sirius, he said you were come back to me.”

He opened the door to a man biting his lip, a rough beard covering his face and eyes that went deep enough to hurt. Sirius’ hair was below his shoulders, strands curled over his tanned face, and his grey eyes still managed to glimmer as Remus entered his vision, silhouetted against a fire.

“Who were you talking to, Remus?” Sirius’s lips lifted slightly in what could have been a smile. “Dark times, innit.”

“Indeed.” Remus opened the door wider to let the shivering man in. “Dark times indeed. I would ask you for a security question, but nobody could pull off that dreadful aristocratic approximation of an East London accent better than you.”

“I’ve been in prison, mate, not much practice.” Sirius had a tiny, ragged holdall of possessions that Remus supposed he’d have to disinfect. “You’ve heard, then?”

“Yes.” Remus wondered why his answers were so short, so awkward, as he ushered Sirius into a chair. He, unlike Sirius, had a lot of practice, considering he’d been talking to him in his head for the past fourteen years. And this was the first time he was really, truly before him and Remus does not know whether he wants to rush into his arms and crash into him like the high tide in Cardiff Bay, or whether he wants to slope away and observe the tarnished beauty of the man. Instead, he apologizes.

“Sorry about the state of the house. Uh – “ Remus gestures around weakly. “You can help yourself to anything. Got in some food. Dumbledore only owled me this morning, wasn’t really time to do much redecorating, really.”

“Remus, _sit down_.” Sirius rolled his eyes and cracked his back. It was astonishing how at home he looked in a place he hadn’t seen for (God, it sounds so odd to say it again and again and again) fourteen years. But he looked as if he belonged there. Like he belonged with Remus, there, in the little cottage in Yorkshire.

“Do you want a sau –“

“I swear to Merlin’s _fucking_ secret stash of cocaine, Remus, if you fucking ask me whether I want a _motherfucking _sausage roll I will castrate you.” Sirius narrowed, before continuing. “As it is, I stand incredibly well fed. Molly Weasley shoved at least three chickens and enough potato farms into me to starve all of Ireland.”

“You shouldn’t joke about that,” Remus smiled weakly. “The Troubles are still going on. Anyway – I did have a package of sausage rolls in if you cared to have one. They – they used to be your favourites.”

“Mate, I want a good night’s sleep.” Sirius stood up. Remus wanted to hit himself – this was thirty-four-year-old Sirius ravaged by unfair years in prison and a year on the run, not the twenty-one-year-old devil-eyed glutton who would eat his way through sixteen packs of sausage rolls before the idea of sleep even occurred to him. Remus Lupin was a certified, Grade Outstanding, idiot.

“Yes, I’ve put out some sheets in the spare room.” Remus faltered. “There’s… there’s an ensuite bathroom in there as well. Go in and get settled, I’ll bring in some towels and a change.”

Something changed in Sirius’ face as Remus hurried off to get towels, something that seemed to say _so that’s how it is then_, but the werewolf did not see it.

Remus paused for a moment before he entered the spare room and looked at himself in the burnished mirror hung on the door. He didn’t look _grotesque_, he decided, his unfortunate condition kept him in shape, his hair was greying (but Sirius had _said, _at twenty one, that he liked silver foxes) but his face was relatively taut and lean, and his eyes were still the light gray-green Sirius claimed to adore – so why? Why was his first meeting with Sirius not a flurry of loving limbs and instead the placid awkwardness of old men being reintroduced after being vague friends at school?

“You really didn’t need to give me _six _towels.” Sirius looked at the multicoloured pile draping off Remus’ arms. “I’ve been air-drying for the best part of a year, Remus, I’m not used to such luxurious attentions.”

God, Remus thought, pretending to busy himself by laying out an arrangement of clothing, this man is as beautiful as he was when he was dragged away screaming feverishly fourteen years ago. Sirius had one of Remus’ six towels tied around his waist, laying loosely beneath where the hipbones dipped. He remembered kissing that dip (it was shallower before), murmuring Tennyson to the man’s angular collarbones.

“He walked in beauty, like the night –“

Sirius’ lip quirked slightly at Remus’ accidental utterance (or perhaps the horrified look on the werewolf’s face) before being masked by the ghostly, Azkaban-esque mask he always seemed to wear nowadays. But Remus wouldn’t know. He hadn’t seen Sirius in almost a year.

“You’re thinking I could have written, aren’t you?” Sirius asked, grimacing at one of the plaid shirts Remus laid out. “Why does it seem like you’ve prepared your entire life to dress as a professor, mate?”

“For all you know, this could be the latest fashion.” Remus countered. He wants to help Sirius do up those buttons. Brush the elbow-length, curling hair from his face. “But yes, Sirius. I was hoping you’d write.”

I was waiting, Remus doesn’t add. I was waiting and waiting, with only the ghost of you to talk to.

“Sorry.” Sirius shrugged, buckling his trousers. “Sorry – I mean, I’d never been any good at apologies. But for once, it isn’t my fault. Dumbledore made me swear I wouldn’t write to you. You’re not at Hogwarts, you know, with their walls and clanking armour. It would be easy to finish you off, or use you to lure me in.”

“Would you?” Remus asked, hoping his fervent tone didn’t carry. Sirius walked him to the door.

“Would I what, mate?”

“Be lured.”

Sirius moved to close the door, with Remus in the hallway, three wet towels and six spare shirts in his hands.

“Like a bloody shark that hasn’t eaten for thirteen years.” _Click_.

And I again am strong:

|   
  
---|---  
  
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;

|   
  
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;

|   
  
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,

|   
  
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,  
  
“You’re right,” Sirius smiled wanly, watching Remus’ cigarette curling smoke into the dregs of the late summer afternoon. It had been a month since Sirius had arrived, wild eyed and panting. A month of curt words and familiar friendship, and nothing more than a handshake since. Sirius stepped barefoot into the drawing room of Grimmauld Place, and Remus pretended to not notice the way he dug his toes into the marble as if he wasn’t used to sun-warmed tiles. Remus closed _Dubliners_, placed it beside him, and stood up.

“I tend to be, yes. But what about, this time?”

“I do need a haircut.” Sirius raked his fingers through his hair and moved tantalizingly closer to Remus. “Something like yours, but not this boring. Don’t give me these Victorian sideburns, any longer and you’ll look like Prince Albert.”

“These aren’t sideburns, Sirius.” Remus rolled his eyes patiently, ushering Sirius downstairs into a dining room chair. Inside however, he felt like the anticipatory beginning of a firework. He asked Remus to cut his hair. Is this then, how they will approach the intimacy he’d craved all along? Is this how they would fall into each other’s arms, like Remus was so certain they would?

“I didn’t ask,” Sirius shrugged, roguishly rolling his head up at Remus, who was running his fingers through the black strands. “How you were all these years?”

“Do you want it so brutally short?” Remus asked, carding his fingers into the locks under the guise of measuring the length. He felt somewhat morose at the thought of cutting so much hair off but understood that catharsis for the traumatized weighed far more than his pining for the laughing boy with dazzlingly black tresses. “I mean – it’s entirely up to you, but –“

“How long do you think I should have it, then?” Sirius was careful of looking ahead, instead of catching Remus’ eye. “That is – if you were me. I don’t know. How long do you think?”

“Perhaps….” Remus traced a finger down the bony neck, stopping at where his shoulder began to swell. “Here.”

Sirius twitched, and to hide that, grinned.

“I leave my head to you, sir.” He closed his eyes as Remus conjured a pair of green scissors and began to snip at his hair. “You didn’t actually answer my question, though. How were you?”

“As expected, I suppose. I got by, I had food on the table. Taught here and there at Muggle boarding schools. Studied more magic into the nights. Survived, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

Remus cut off the final hanging lock and let it drop to the floor, before turning Sirius’ chair to face him. This was too close, he thinks as he trims the hair in front to fall in pleasing layers, his hands almost brushing his ex-lover’s face whilst they exchanged these terse, formal words. How are you? Where have you been? Excellent sunshine, this.

“Lived alone, then?” Sirius seemed to choke on the words. “Thirteen years is – a long time.”

“I…” Remus looked at the purple shadows under his once-lover’s sunken eyes, and at the hair tumbling carelessly around his chin, making his concave cheeks all the more obvious. Why did Sirius want to know who he had lived with? But of course – he didn’t know Remus lived with a devastating attempt at conjuring a ghost who never left his side. “Yes, I did.”

With a smirk, Sirius ran his fingers through his shorter hair, shaking his head to get rid of stray strands as he bounced up out of the chair, catching Remus a glancing blow on the shoulder. He laughed, a ghost of his harsh bark.

“Found nobody else to warm those old bones, then?”

“You’re still cruel.” Remus turned, looking a desperate sight with locks of Sirius’ hair in his hands and his white lips held in a thin line. “You’re still cruel as the day you left.”

“What’s brought this on?” Sirius’ smirk turned into more laughter, and Remus’ hands closed into fists around the lank black hair. He wanted to hit the tragically beautiful figure across the room and watch as a bruise purpled on his pale cheek. “Did I say something?”

“No, I was just making an observation.” Remus had gotten himself under control, and the sudden stab of childish upset turned into the heated tip of rage. “I was just – it’s been thirteen years after all. And your face may have changed, and your eyes may have gone further in, but you’re still cruel to me, like you’ve always been.”

“Ah, you think I’m the same to you?” Sirius’ temper flared as suddenly as it used to, his voice rising. He knew people were in the house preparing for Harry’s arrival but he didn’t care – not when Remus was baiting him, his eyes glazed with suppressed anger. “You think I’m the same as I’ve been all those years ago, yes, when I’d piss you off by making jokes when we were arguing, or when I’d copy your homework word-to-word so we’d get detention together. You call that cruel, Remus? Oh, my friend, you think _this_ is cruelty?”

“I think you are selfish,” Remus made efforts to control his tone, but couldn’t help bristle at the word _friend_. “I think you are a selfish man, and _how_ I thought you were the same I –“

“You call me selfish?” Sirius exclaimed, striding towards Remus, knocking over the heavy dining chair. “You sit here, wanting whatever died thirteen years ago, and say _I_ am the selfish one?”

“I did not say I wanted anything!” Remus thundered, shaken by how Sirius had seen so cleanly through him.

“Remus!” Molly burst in through the oak panelled doors, coming across the men almost nose to nose, shaking with rage. “Oh – I’m sorry. I’ve – well, Dumbledore sent me to get you. The Advance Guard’s waiting outside. I –“

She gazed at Remus with a slowly clearing confusion, as Sirius stalked upstairs, ignoring both the redheaded woman and the werewolf still clutching dark hair, his jaw working as he tried to smile at Molly. He understands how he must look, deranged, idiotic, childish – she must not have overheard, must she? But Molly was a woman of unparalleled kindness and even if she heard nothing of what had transpired, she’d seen Sirius’ black look, and the other man’s devastatingly bewildered countenance. And the hurt in his eyes upset her. The pity in hers killed him.

The homely nurse doth all she can

|   
  
---|---  
  
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,

|   
  
Forget the glories he hath known,

|   
  
And that imperial palace whence he came.  
  
“She was being a _bitch_, Remus, you know it and you just don’t want to admit it.” Sirius raged, slamming his hands onto the kitchen table. It had been a week since Harry had passed his Ministry hearing and Remus and Sirius put aside their earlier arguments in a tenuously warm truce only to have Sirius blow up at him again, over the unfortunate topic of Molly Weasley.

“She is overstepping the mark when it comes to Harry, yes, but you must be aware you are as well.” Remus measured out his sentence carefully, not wanting a repeat of earlier fights. “Think of it two ways: the boy is only fifteen years old, and the boy is already fifteen years old. He deserves to be mothered, and he deserves to have a father who encourages him to learn more about our world but he doesn’t deserve the unending pressure of both these figures arguing over him in this well-meaning wand-measuring contest.”

“So, she’s Harry’s parental figure then?” Sirius challenged, arms crossed over his chest.

“I said she is his maternal figure, Sirius.” Remus leaned back in his chair, facing Sirius. “He had nobody at all, and the mother of his friend looked after him for the last four years as best as she could. You cannot fault her for that.”

“Maternal figure, huh?” Sirius repeated, rolling the words around in his mouth. “You think she’s going to replace Lily then, Remus? Why don’t you go on in and replace James then? I mean, you taught him for what, nine months? Basically, the same as giving birth to the kid.”

Remus felt the white-hot, untouchable, frantic stab of rage again, but suppressed it. Was Sirius’ temper, so understandable, so typical of him even before Azkaban let alone after – worth him looking more and more like a stereotypical werewolf? He looked straight past Sirius, at the dull tapestry in the dining room.

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Sirius.” Remus cautioned, raising a finger in a gesture both professor-like and frightening. “Please don’t put words in my mouth, especially when they are meant to hurt so much.”

“Don’t forget where the fuck you came from then.” Sirius spat, standing up so quickly his chair hit the tapestry Remus was intently concentrating on. “Things may have changed, and you’ve all left me thirteen fucking years behind and expect me to _know_ my godson knows another mother to the one I saw fucking give birth to him. And here you are, Remus, sat pining over whatever died thirteen fucking years ago.”

Remus said nothing, he knew that if he opened his mouth Sirius would either punch him or curse him, and _God_, he wanted to do nothing more than hit the man clean across the face because all thought of kissing him apparently died thirteen years ago, and Remus was talking to a ghost who declared he loved him every day, but it was all false, because everything died thirteen years ago, and Sirius was walking out anyway and it didn’t matter what he did because one of the most important magical laws is to never bring back the dead, let alone what died thirteen years ago. So, Remus tried to breathe slowly and listen to Sirius’ hurried footsteps and the slamming of a door and watch the softness of the mahogany coloured tapestry.

“I couldn’t help but overhear,” Remus spun around, and slumped back into his chair as Molly Weasley sat in Sirius’ recently vacated seat. She looked pale, with flushed spots high on her round cheeks – in fact, she looked like a woman who heard a perfectly decent friend call her a bitch behind her back. “And… I thought of thanking you, for defending me. But you didn’t have to. I understand where he’s coming from, Remus. And why he’s saying these things.”

“I do too,” Remus lies, and the same breath the lie travelled on left him like a gust. “But he says things… to twist the knife, Molly. He always has done this, even before Azkaban. He deals with his own agony by hurting his closest friends and –“

He breathes in, and decides to tell her, because after all it died thirteen years ago and you can’t keep a secret that died thirteen years ago.

“- and me.”

“I think I understand.” Molly reached out for Remus’ hand, which involuntarily clutched hers. “You loved him, then?”

“It wasn’t just me,” Remus laughed. To his surprise, he felt a great swell of tears within him, but gritted his teeth to suppress it entirely. It would not do. “He loved me too. In that way, yes, he loved me too. For five years.”

“Yes, I’ve heard…” Molly smiled affectionately, and squeezed his hand. “And you loved him since then? Since all of it?”

Perhaps anyone with two eyes and ears could have known that Remus and Sirius were in love but not a soul – not Dumbledore, or Snape, or McGonagall knew what Remus was about to confess.

“I speak to him, sometimes.” He laughed then and corrected himself. “I mean – before. Back then, when he was in prison. I’d pretend he was beside me and I’d speak to him and I’d… I don’t know.”

His hand was held tighter, like a tether.

“It’s like I made him up inside my head.”

But for those first affections,

|   
  
---|---  
  
Those shadowy recollections,

|   
  
Which, be they what they may,

|   
  
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,

|   
  
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;

|   
  
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make

|   
  
Our noisy years seem moments in the being  
  
“SODOM. A SODOMIZER IN THE HOUSE OF BLACK TAINTING MY UNGRATEFUL FIRSTBORN, HE EATS FLESH –“ Remus ripped the curtain across Walburga’s face in an effort to shut the portrait up and stood there blankly, the torn pieces of curtain flapping across her still screaming face.

“My _dear_ sodomizer,” Sirius’ voice cut in from behind him, amused. “You are a wizard, you know.”

“Yes, of course – I was just –“ Remus repaired the curtains and wrenched them across the portrait, and turned on Sirius. His eyes were wary. That stung Sirius more than he cared to say.

“Well, it’s the full moon tonight, isn’t it?” Sirius asked nonchalantly, shrugging. “You didn’t stay for the last one. I was wondering. Buckbeak’s tame enough, he can get out of his room and it’s reinforced, and –“

Remus is tired. And, he realized, quite a bit sad. He didn’t want to get into another argument with Sirius, and if the latter went into one of his moods and let him claw himself to death then so be it.

And so, he let himself be led upstairs.

He woke in scratchy white bedsheets, wearing pyjama bottoms that weren’t his, and a rough bandage around his chest. Sirius sat peering at him from a chair beside the bed, a set of books nervously balanced on his knees.

“Now before you go on,” he began, raising his hands. “I know the bandage isn’t tied properly but you know what, you’re alive.”

“Idiot,” Remus tried to elbow Sirius’s closest knee, but hit a book instead. “What’s this?” Learnt to read? Merlin, it’s about bloody time.”

“Shut up.” Sirius snapped, rolling his eyes. “I was reading to you. Or trying to. You kept kicking out in your sleep every time I pronounced a word wrong.”

“Well, go on then. What were you reading?”

“Just bits out of everything. And then – I found this one and I folded the page down because I wanted you to be awake for it.” Sirius ran his hand through his hair and tugged at it. “I suppose, Remus, there are things you expect me to say.”

“I expect nothing.” Remus replied, curt. “I have never expected anything.”

“Don’t start.” Sirius hissed, before softening his tone. “And I’ve been shit. I don’t know. Everything is so new, and I am so old, and you are so much more tired. I just want to read to you, Remus.”

Remus said nothing, so Sirius opened the book and thumbed to the page he’d marked out.

“I love you only because it's you the one I love;   
I hate you deeply, and hating you  
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you  
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.”

Sirius kept on reading, his head bent. Remus looked at how the sun glistened off his pointed nose and shied away from his gaunt cheeks framed by soft black hair. He is sorry. He is suddenly frightened at how remorseful he is, and how Sirius’ own apology radiated off the walls of the room with the words of the poem. Remus felt the great sadness rise within him again and this time he could not starve the well of tears any longer and let it feed on him, covering his face with his hands as he began to sob.

Sirius could have made any comment about how Remus would always cry at poetry, but he knows that it is not poetry that brought this on and Sirius could not face bringing up has-beens. Not tonight, when his soul is fraught with being so close to the ghost of an emotion he was adamant had died and watching Remus sleep, and toss, and _hurt_ pained him in ways he could not express. He was always so starved of words these days. So he took the poet’s words, and continued reading, and he did not meet Remus’ tear filled eyes or kiss his longing lips but he grabbed onto the hand that Remus had thrown onto his face.

And this, for now, would do.

—But there's a tree, of many, one,

|   
  
---|---  
  
A single field which I have look'd upon,

|   
  
Both of them speak of something that is gone:

|   
  
The pansy at my feet

|   
  
Doth the same tale repeat:

|   
  
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

|   
  
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?  
  
**Author's Note:**

> Chapter II will be up soon, and hopefully a happier tale than this. 
> 
> Please, please do comment your thoughts, or expectations for the next bit!


End file.
